Tim Scott: Single Again

Sources close to Tim Scott tell FITS that South Carolina’s junior United States Senator is no longer dating Charleston, S.C. lingerie store owner Zee Patel. In other words he’s single … and ready to mingle.

“It’s been over,” one source said of the relationship, indicating the split was “mutual.”

Scott’s relationship with the Indian-American hottie – whom he referred to publicly as a “close family friend” – became public knowledge last Spring when Patel accompanied him to the exclusive Cloister resort on Georgia’s Sea Island for a three-day junket sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. Scott – then a U.S. Representative – had to disclose the trip on congressional ethics forms.

Sources close to Patel confirmed the two were no longer romantically involved, although they disputed the “mutual” nature of the breakup.

“He just stopped calling her,” one said.

Ouch …

Scott has made headlines for his strict views on abstinence before marriage, although he admitted in March of 2012 that he was no longer following that standard himself. Still, “at the end of the day, the Bible is very clear: abstinence until marriage. Not to do so is a sin,” Scott told The National Journal.

Both of South Carolina’s U.S. Senators – the 47-year-old Scott and the 57-year-old Lindsey Graham – are bachelors who have never been married, and both have faced rumors regarding their sexual orientation.

Scott has never addressed those rumors, but Graham has.

“I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men — I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge — but I ain’t available,” he told The New York Times Magazine in 2010. “I ain’t gay. Sorry.”

Obviously we don’t care if politicians are gay, straight, bisexual, transgender or whatever floats their boat. All we care about is how they vote. Of course if they go after other politicians for their personal failings (as Graham did with Bill Clinton in the late 1990s) or if they sanctimoniously proclaim Christian values (as Scott has), then their sexuality becomes fair game as far as we’re concerned.